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Electronic Reserve Text From: Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977 What Is an Author?
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[114] and others as well, but failed to realize that I had allowed their names to function ambiguously. This has proved an embarassment to me in that my oversight has served to raise two pertinent objections. It was argued that
I had not properly described Buffon or his work and that my handling
of Marx was pitifully inadequate in terms of the totality of his thought.(1)
Although these objections were obviously justified, they ignored the
task I had set myself: I had no intention of describing Buffon or Marx
or of reproducing their statements or implicit meanings, but, simply
stated, I wanted to locate the rules that formed a certain number of
concepts and theoretical relationships in their works.(2) In addition,
it was argued that I had created monstrous families by bringing together
names as disparate as Buffon and Linnaeus or in placing Cuvier next
to Darwin in defiance of the most readily observable family resemblances
and natural ties.3 This objection also seems inappropriate since I had
never tried to establish a genealogical table of exceptional individuals,
nor was I concerned in forming an intellectual daguerreotype of the
scholar or naturalist of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. In
fact, I had no intention of forming any family, whether holy or perverse.
On the contrary, I wanted to determine-a much more modest task-the functional
conditions of specific discursive practices. Then why did I use the names of authors in The Order of ----------------------------------------- [115] Things?
Why not avoid their use altogether, or, short of that, why not define
the manner in which they were used? These questions appear fully justified
and I have tried to gauge their For the purposes
of this paper, I will set aside a sociohistorical analysis of the author
as an individual and the numerous questions that deserve attention in
this context: how the author was Beckett supplies
a direction: 'What matter who's speaking, someone said, what matter
who's speaking."(5) In an indifference --------------------------------------- 4. The Archaeology
of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock, 1972)
was published in France in 1969; for discussion of the author, see esp.
pp. 92-6, 122. [116] such as this we
must recognize one of the fundamental ethical principles of contemporary
writing. It is not simply "ethical" because it characterizes
our way of speaking and writing, but because it stands as an immanent
rule, endlessly adopted and yet never fully applied. As a principle,
it dominates writing as an ongoing practice and slights our customary
attention to the finished product.(6) For the sake of illustration,
we need only consider two of its major themes. First, the writing of
our day has freed itself from the necessity of "expression";
it only refers to itself, yet it is not restricted to the confines of
interiority. On the contrary, we recognize it in its exterior deployment.(7)
This reversal transforms writing into an interplay of signs, regulated
less by the content it signifies than by the very nature of the signifier.
Moreover, it implies an action that is always testing the limits of
its regularity, transgressing and reversing an order that it accepts
and manipulates. Writing unfolds like a game that inevitably moves beyond
its own rules and finally leaves them behind. Thus, the essential basis
of this writing is not the exalted emotions related to the act of composition
or the insertion of a subject into language. Rather, it is primarily
concerned with creating an opening where the writing subject endlessly
disappears. (8) The second theme
is even more familiar: it is the kinship between writing and death.
This relationship inverts the age-old . 6. Cf. Edward Said,
"The Ethics of Language," Diacritics, 4 (1974), [117] conception of Greek
narrative or epic, which was designed to guarantee the immortality of
a hero. The hero accepted an early death because his life, consecrated
and magnified by death, ------------------------------ 9. See above, "Language
to Infinity," p. 58. [118] seems to me that
the themes destined to replace the privileged position accorded the
author have- merely served to arrest the possibility of genuine change.
Of these, I will examine two that seem particularly important. To begin with,
the thesis concerning a work. It has been understood that the task of
criticism is not to reestablish the ties between an author and his work
or to reconstitute an author's thought and experience through his works
and, further, that criticism should concern itself with the structures
of a work, its architectonic forms, which are studied for their intrinsic
and internal relationships.(11) Yet, what of a context that questions
the concept of a work? What, in short, is the strange unit designated
by the term, work? What is necessary to its composition, if a work is
not something written by a person called an "author?" Difficulties arise
on all sides if we raise the question in this way. If an individual
is not an author, what are we to make of those things he has written
or said, left among his papers or communicated to others? Is this not
properly a work? What, for instance, were Sade's papers before he was
consecrated as an author? Little more, perhaps, than roles of paper
on which he endlessly unravelled his fantasies while in prison. Assuming that we
are dealing with an author, is everything he wrote and said, everything
he left behind, to be included in his work? This problem is both theoretical
and practical. Ifwe wish -------------------------- 11. Plainly a prescription for criticism as diverse as G. Wilson Knight's The Wheel of Fire (London, 1930) and Roland Barthes' On Racine, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964). [119] in his works? Why
not? These practical considerations are endless once we consider how
a work can be extracted from the millions of traces left by an individual
after his death. Plainly, we lack a theory to encompass the questions
generated by a work and the empirical activity of those who naively
undertake the publication of the complete works of an author often suffers
from the absence of this framework. Yet more questions arise. Can we
say that The Arabian Nights, and Stromates of Clement
of Alexandria, or the Lives of Diogenes Laertes constitute works?
Such questions only begin to suggest the range of our difficulties,
and, if some have found it convenient to by-pass the individuality of
the writer or his status as an author to concentrate on a work, they
have failed to appreciate the equally problematic nature of the word
"work" and the unity it designates. Another thesis
has detained us from taking full measure of the author's disappearance.
It avoids confronting the specific event that makes it possible and,
in subtle ways, continues to preserve the existence of the author. This
is the notion of écriture.(12) Strictly speaking, it should
allow us not only to circumvent references to an author, but to situate
his recent absence. The conception of ecriture, as currently employed,
is concerned with neither the act of writing nor the indications, as
symptoms or signs within a text, of an author's meaning; rather, it
stands for a remarkably --------------------------------- 12. We have kept the French, écriture, with its double reference to the act of writing and to the primordial (and metaphysical) nature of writing as an entity in itself, since it is the term that best identifies the program of Jacques Derrida. Like the theme of a self-referential writing, it too builds on a theory of the sign and denotes writing as the interplay of presence and absence in that "signs represent the present in its absence" ("Differance," in Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison [Evanston Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973], p. 138). See J. Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1967). [120] has merely transposed
the empirical characteristics of an author to a transcendental anonymity.
The extremely visible signs of the author's empirical activity are effaced
to allow the play, in parallel or opposition, of religious and critical
modes of characterization. In granting a primordial status to writing,
do we not, in effect, simply reinscribe in transcendental terms the
theological affirmation of its sacred origin or a critical belief in
its creative nature? To say that writing, in terms of the particular
history it made possible, is subjected to forgetfulness and repression,
is this not to reintroduce in transcendental terms the religious principle
of hidden meanings (which require interpretation) and the critical assumption
of implicit significations, silent purposes, and obscure contents (which
give rise to commentary)? Finally, is not the conception of writing
as absence a transposition into transcendental terms of the religious
belief in a fixed and continuous tradition or the aesthetic principle
that proclaims the survival of the work as a kind of enigmatic supplement
of the author beyond his own death?(13) This conception of écrituree sustains the privileges of the author through the safeguard of the a priori; the play of representations that formed a particular image of the author is extended within a gray neutrality. The disappearance of the author--since Mallarme, an event of our time--is held in check by the transcendental. Is it not necessary to draw a line between those who believe that we can continue to situate our present discontinuities within the historical and transcendental tradition of the nineteenth century and those who are making a great effort to liberate themselves, once and for all, from this conceptual framework?(14) --------------------------------- 13. On "supplement,"
see Speech and Phenomena, pp. 88-104. [121] It is obviously
insufficient to repeat empty slogans: the author has disappeared; God
and man died a common death.(15) Rather, we should reexamine the empty
space left by the author's disappearance; we should attentively observe,
along its gaps and fault lines, its new demarcations, and the reapportionment
of this void; we should await the fluid functions released by this disappearance.
In hiis context we can briefly consider the problems that arise in the
use of an author's name. What is the name of an author? How does it
function? Far from offering a solution, I will attempt to indicate some
of the difficulties related to these questions. The name of an author poses all the problems related to the category of the proper name. (Here, I am referring to the work of John Searle,[16] among others.) Obviously not a pure and simple reference, the proper name (and the author's name as well) has other than indicative functions. It is more than a gesture, a finger pointed at someone; it is, to a certain extent, the equivalent of a description. When we say "Aristotle," we are using a word that means one or a series of definite descriptions of the type: "the author of the Analytics," or "the founder of ontology," and so forth. (17) Furthermore, a proper name has other functions than that of signification: when we discover that Rimbaud has not written La Chasse spirituelle, we cannot maintain that the meaning of the proper name or this author's name has been altered. The proper name and the name of an author oscillate between the poles of description and designation, and, granting that they are linked to what they name, they are not totally determined either by their descriptive or designative functions.i8 Yet-and it is here that the specific difficulties attend- -------------------------------------
[122] ing an author's
name appear-the link between a proper name and the individual being
named and the link between an author's name and that which it names
are not isomorphous and do not function in the same way; and these differences
require clarification. To learn, for example,
that Pierre Dupont does not have blue eyes, does not live in Paris,
and is not a doctor does not invalidate the fact that the name, Pierre
Dupont, continues to refer to the same person; there has been no modification
of the designation that links the name to the person. With the name
of an author, however, the problems are far more complex. The disclosure
that Shakespeare was not born in the house that tourists now visit would
not modify the functioning of the author's name, but, if it were proved
that he had not written the sonnets that we at [123] These differences
indicate that an author's name is not simply an element of speech (as
a subject, a complement, or an element that could be replaced by a pronoun
or other parts of speech). Its presence is functional in that it serves
as a means of classification. A name can group together a number of
texts and thus differentiate them from others. A name also establishes
different forms of relationships among texts. Neither Hermes not Hippocrates
existed in the sense that we can say Balzac existed, but the fact that
a number of texts were attached to a single name implies that relationships
of homogeneity, filiation, reciprocal explanation, authentification,
or of common utilization were established among them. Finally, the author's
name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse. Discourse
that possesses an authors name is not to be immediately consumed and
forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary,
fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated
by the culture in which it circulates. We can conclude
that, unlike a proper name, which moves from the interior of a discourse
to the real person outside who produced it, the name of the author remains
at the contours of --------------------- 19. This is a particularly important point and brings together a great many of Foucault's insights concerning the relationship of an author (subject) to discourse. It reflects his understanding of the traditional and often unexamined unities of discourse whose actual discontinuities are resolved in either of two ways: by reference to an originating subject or to a language, conceived as plenitude, which supports the activities of commentary or interpretation. But since Foucault rejects the belief in the presumed fullness of language that underlies discourse, the author is subjected to the same fragmenta- [124] sequently, we can
say that in our culture, the name of an author is a variable that accompanies
only certain texts to the exclusion of others: a private letter may
have a signatory, but it does not have an author; a contract can have
an underwriter, but not an author; and, similarly, an anonymous poster
attached to a wall may have a writer, but he cannot be an author. In
this sense, the function of an author is to characterize the existence,
circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society. ~~~~ In dealing with
the "author" as a function of discourse, we must consider
the characteristics of a discourse that support this use and determine
its difference from other discourses. If we limit our remarks to only
those books or texts with authors, we can isolate four different features. ----------------------------- [125] system of ownership
and strict copyright rules were established (toward the end of the eighteenth
and beginning of the nineteenth century) that the transgressive properties
always intrinsic to the act of writing became the forceful imperative
of literature.(21) It is as if the author, at the moment he was accepted
into the social order of property which governs our culture, was compensating
for his new status by reviving the older bipolar field of discourse
in a systematic practice of transgression and by restoring the danger
of writing which, on another side, had been conferred the benefits of
property. Secondly, the "author-function"(22) is not universal or constant in all discourse. Even within our civilization, the same types of texts have not always required authors; there was a time when those texts which we now call "literary" (stories, folk tales, epics, and tragedies) were accepted, circulated, and valorized without any question about the identity of their author. Their anonymity was ignored because their real or supposed age was a sufficient guarantee of their authenticity. Texts, however, that we now call "scientific" (dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine or illness, the natural sciences or geography) were only considered ----------------------------------- not simply a recent
phenomenon, a limited case of the ancient and widespread belief that
truth is a function of events? In an older time and in other cultures,
the search for truth was hazardous in the extreme and truth resided
in a danger zone, but if this was so and if truth could only be approached
after a long preparation or through the details of a ritualized procedure,
it was because it represented power. Discourse, for these cultures,
was an active appropriation of power and to the extent that it was successful,
it contained the power of truth itself charged with all its risks and
benefits. |
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[126] truthful during
the Middle Ages if the name of the author was indicated. Statements
on the order of "Hippocrates said. .." or "Pliny tells
us that. .."were not merely formulas for an argument based on authority;
they marked a proven discourse. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
a totally new conception was developed when scientific texts were accepted
on their own merits and positioned within an anonymous and coherent
conceptual system of established truths and methods of verifica tion.
Authentification no longer required reference to the individual who
had produced them; the role of the author disappeared as an index of
truthfulness and, where it remained asan inventor's name, it was merely
to denote a specific theorem or proposition, a strange effect, a property,
a body, a group of elements, or pathological syndrome. At the same time,
however, "literary" discourse was acceptable only if it carried
an author's name; every text of poetry or fiction was obliged to state
its author and the date, place, and circumstance of its writing. The
meaning and value attributed to the text depended on this information.
If by accident or design a text was presented anonymously, every effort
was made to locate its author. Literary anonymity was of interest only
as a puzzle to be solved as, in our day, literary works are totally
dominated by the sovereignty of the author. (Undoubtedly, these remarks
are far too categorical. Criticism has been concerned for some time
now with aspects of a text not fully dependent on the notion of an in
dividual creator; studies of genre or the analysis of recurring textual
motifs and their variations from a norm other than the author. Furthermore,
where in mathematics the author has become little more than a handy
reference for a particular theorem or group of propositions, the reference
to an author in biology and medicine, or to the date of his research
has a substantially different bearing. This latter reference, more than
simply indicat [127] experimental materials
available at a given time and in a particular laboratory. ) The third point
concerning this "author-function" is that it is not formed
spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourse to an individual.
It results from a complex operation whose purpose is to construct the
rational entity we call an author. Undoubtedly, this construction is
assigned a "realistic" dimension as we speak of an individual's
"profundity" or "creative" power, his intentions
or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Nevertheless, these
aspects of an individual, which we designate as an author (or which
comprise an individual as an author), are projections, in terms always
more or less psychological, of our way of handling texts: in the comparisons
we make, the traits we extract as pertinent, the continuities we assign,
or the exclusions we practice. In addition, all these operations vary
according to the period and the form of discourse concerned. A "philosopher"
and a "poet" are not constructed in the same manner; and the
author of an eighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the
modern novelist. There are, nevertheless, transhistorical constants
in the rules that govern the construction of an author. In literary criticism, for example, the traditional methods for defining an author-or, rather, for determining the configuration of the author from existing texts-derive in large part from those used in the Christian tradition to authenticate (or to reject) the particular texts in its possession. Modern criticism, in its desire to "recover" the author from a work, employs devices strongly reminiscent of Christian exegesis when it wished to prove the value of a text by ascertaining the holiness of its author. In De Viris Illustribus, Saint Jerome maintains that homonymy is not proof of the common authorship of several works, since many individuals could have the same name or someone could have perversely appropriated another's name. The name, as an individual mark, is not sufficient as it relates to a textual tradition. [128] How, then, can
several texts be attributed to an individual author? What norms, related
to the function of the author, will disclose the involvement of several
authors? According to Saint Jerome, there are four criteria: the texts
that must be eliminated from the list of works attributed to a single
author are those inferior to the others (thus, the author is defined
as a standard level of quality); those whose ideas conflict with the
doctrine expressed in the others (here the author is defined as a certain
field of conceptual or theoretical coherence); those written in a different
style and containing words and phrases not ordinarily found in the other
works (the author is seen as a stylistic uniformity); and those referring
to events or historical figures subsequent to the death of the author
(the author is thus a definite historical figure in which a series of
events converge). Although modem criticism does not appear to have these
same suspicions concerning authentication, its strategies for defining
the author present striking similarities, The author explains the presence
of certain events within a text, as well as their transformations, distortions,
and their various modifications (and this through an author's biography
or by reference to his particular point of view, in the analysis of
his social preferences and his position within a class or by delineating
his fundamental objectives). The author also constitutes a principle
of unity in writing where any unevenness of production is ascribed to
changes caused by evolution, maturation, or outside influence. In addition,
the author serves to neutralize the contradictions that are found in
a series of texts. Governing this function is the belief that there
must be-at a particular level of an author's thought, of his conscious
or unconscious desire-a point where contradictions are resolved, where
the incompatible elements can be shown to relate to one another or to
cohere around a fundamental and originating contradiction. Finally,
the author is a particular source of expression who, in more or less
finished forms, is manifested equally well, and with similar validity,
in a text, in letters, fragments, drafts, [129] and so forth. Thus,
even while Saint Jerome's four principles of authenticity might seem
largely inadequate to modern critics, they, nevertheless, define the
critical modalities now used to display the function of the author.(23) However, it would be false to consider the function of the author as a pure and simple reconstruction after the fact of a text given as passive material, since a text always bears a number of signs that refer to the author. Well known to grammarians, these textual signs are personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, and the conjugation of verbs.(24) But it is important to note that these elements have a different bearing on texts with an author and on those without one. In the latter, these "shifters" refer to a real speaker and to an actual deictic situation, with certain exceptions such as the case of indirect speech in the first person. When discourse is linked to an author, however, the role of "shifters" is more complex and variable. It is well known that in a novel narrated in the first person, neither the first person pronoun, the present indicative tense, nor, for that matter, its signs of localization refer directly to the writer, either to the time when he wrote, or to the specific act of writing; rather, they stand for a "second self'(25) whose similarity to the author is never fixed and undergoes considerable alteration within the course of a single book. It would be as false to seek the author in relation to the actual writer as to the fictional narrator; the "author-function" arises out of their scission-in the division and distance of the two. One might object that this phenomenon only ---------------------------------------------
applies to novels or poetry, to a context of "quasi-discourse," but, in fact, all discourse that supports this "author-function" is characterized by this plurality of egos. In a mathematical treatise, the ego who indicates the circumstances of composition in the preface is not identical, either in terms of his position or his function, to the "I" who concludes a demonstration within the body of the text. The former implies a unique individual who, at a given time and place, succeeded in completing a project, whereas the latter indicates an instance and plan of demonstration that anyone could perform provided the same set of axioms, preliminary operations, and an identical set of symbols were used. It is also possible
to locate a third ego: one who speaks of the "goals of his investigation,
the obstacles encountered, its results, and the problems yet to be solved
and this 'T' would function in a field of existing or future mathematical
discourses. Weare not dealing with a system of dependencies where a
first and essential use of the 'T' is reduplicated, as a kind of fiction,
by the other two. On the contrary, the "author-function" in
such discourses operates so as to effect the simultaneous dispersion
of the three egos.(26) Further elaboration
would, of course, disclose other char acteristics of the "author-function,"
but I have limited myself to the four that seemed the most obvious and
important. They can be summarized in the following manner: the "author-function"
is tied to the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine,
and articulate the realm of discourses; it does not -------------------------------------------- [131] actual individual insofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to a series of subjective positions that individuals of any class may come to occupy.
~~~~ I am aware that
until now I have kept my subject within unjustifiable limits; I should
also have spoken of the "author-function" in painting, music,
technical fields, and so forth. Admitting that my analysis is restricted
to the domain of discourse, it seems that I have given the term "author"
an excessively narrow meaning. I have discussed the author only in the
limited sense of a person to whom the production of a text, a book,
or a work can be legitimately attributed. However, it is obvious that
even within the realm of discourse a person can be the author of much
more than a book-of a theory, for instance, of a tradition or a discipline
within which new books and authors can proliferate. For convenience,
we could say that such authors occupy a "trans discursive"
position. Homer, Aristotle,
and the Church Fathers played this role, as did the first mathematicians
and the originators of the Hippocratic tradition. This type of author
is surely as old as our civilization. But I believe that the nineteenth
century in Europe produced a singular type of author who should not
be confused with "great" literary authors, or the authors
of canonical religious texts, and the founders of sciences. Somewhat
arbitrarily, we might call them "initiators of discursive practices." The distinctive
contribution of these authors is that they produced not only their own
work, but the possibility and the rules of formation of other texts.
In this sense, their role differs entirely from that of a novelist,
for example, who is basically never more than the author of his own
text. Freud is not simply the author of The Interpretation of Dreams
or of Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious and Marx is not
simply the author of the Communist Manifesto or Capital:
they both established the endless possibility of discourse. Obviously,
an easy objection can be [132] text; if he acquires
some "importance" in the literary world, his influence can
have significant ramifications. To take a very simple example, one could
say that Ann Radcliffe did not simply write The Mysteries of Udolpho
and a few other novels, but also made possible the appearance of Gothic
Romances at the beginning of the nineteenth century. To this extent,
her function as an author exceeds the limits of her work. However, this
objection can be answered by the fact that the possibilities disclosed
by the initiators of discursive practices (using the examples of Marx
and Freud, whom I believe to be the first and the most important) are
significantly different from those suggested by novelists. The novels
of Ann Radcliffe put into circulation a certain number of resemblances
and analogies patterned on her work-various characteristic signs, figures,
relationships, and structures that could be integrated into other books.
In short, to say that Ann Radcliffe created the Gothic Romance means
that there are certain elements common to her works and to the nineteenth-century
Gothic romance: the heroine ruined by her own innocence, the secret
fortress that functions as a countercity, the outlaw-hero who swears
revenge on the world that has cursed him, etc. On the other hand, Marx
and Freud, as "initiators of discursive practices," not only
made possible a certain number of analogies that could be adopted by
future texts, but, as importantly, they also made possible a certain
number of differences. They cleared a space for the introduction of
elements other than their own, which, nevertheless, remain within the
field of disqourse they initiated. In saying that Freud founded psychoanalysis,
we do not simply mean that the concept of libido or the techniques of
dream analysis reappear in the writings of Karl Abraham or Melanie Klein,
but that he made possible a certain number of differences with respect
to his books, concepts, and hypotheses, which all arise out of psychoanalytic
discourse. Is this not the case, however, with the founder of any new science or of any author who successfully transforms an existing [133] science? After
all, Galileo is indirectly responsible for the texts of those who mechanically
applied the laws he formulated, in addition to having paved the way
for the production of statements far different from his own. If Cuvier
is the founder of biology and Saussure of linguistics, it is not because
they were imitated or that an organic concept or a theory of the sign
was uncritically integrated into new texts, but because Cuvier, to a
certain extent, made possible a theory of evolution diametrically opposed
to his own system and because Saussure made possible a generative grammar
radically different from his own structural analysis. Superficially,
then, the initiation of discursive practices appears similar to the
founding of any scientific endeavor, but I believe there is a fundamental
difference. In a scientific
program, the founding act is on an equal footing with its future transformations:
it is merely one among the many modifications that it makes possible.
This interdependence can ------------------------------ 27. Cf. the discussion
of disciplines in L 'Ordre du discours, pp. 31-38.[134]"false"
statements in the work of these initiators; those statements considered
inessential or "prehistoric," in that they are associated
with another discourse, are simply neglected in favor of the more pertinent
aspects of the work. The initiation of a discursive practice, unlike
the founding of a science, overshadows and is necessarily detached from
its later developments and transformations. As a consequence, we define
the theoretical validity of a statement with respect to the work of
the initiator, whereas in the case of Galileo or Newton, it is based
on the structural and intrinsic norms established in cosmology or physics.
Stated schematically, the work of these initiators is not situated in
relation In keeping with
this distinction, we can understand why it is inevitable that practitioners
of such discourses must "return to the origin." Here, as well,
it is necessary to distinguish a "return" from scientific
"rediscoveries" or "reactivations." "Rediscoveries"
are the effects of analogy or isomorphism with current forms of knowledge
that allow the perception of forgotten or obscured The phrase, "return to," designates a movement with its proper ---------------------------- 28. Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). 29. La Communication: Hermes I (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1968). [135] specificity, which characterizes the initiation of discursive practices. If we return, it is because of a basic and constructive omission an omission that is not the result of accident or incomprehension.(30) In effect, the act of initiation is such, in its essence, that it is inevitably subjected to its own distortions; that which displays this act and derives from it is, at the same time, the root of its divergences and travesties. This nonaccidental omission must be regulated by precise operations that can be situated, analysed, and reduced in a return to the act of initiation. The barrier imposed by omission was not added from the outside; it arises from the discursive practice in question, which gives it its law. Both the cause of the barrier and the means for its removal, this omission-also responsible for the obstacles that prevent returning to the act of initiation-can only be resolved by a return. In addition, it is always a return to a text in itself, specifically, to a primary and unadorned text with particular attention to those things registered in the interstices of the text, its gaps and absences. We return to those empty spaces that have been masked by omission or concealed in a false and misleading plenitude. In these rediscoveries of an essential lack, we find the oscillation of two characteristic responses: "This point was made-you can't help seeing it if you know how to read"; or, inversely, "No, that point is not made in any of the printed words in the text, but it is expressed through the words, in their relationships and in the distance that separates them." It follows naturally that this return, which is a part of the discursive mechanism, constantly introduces modifications and that the return to a text is not a historical supplement that would come to fix itself upon the primary discursivity and redouble it in the form of an ornament which, after all, is not essential. Rather, it is an effective and necessary means of transforming discursive practice. A study of Galileo's works could alter our knowledge -------------------------- 30. For a discussion of the recent reorientation of the sign, see Foucault's "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx." On the role of repetition, Foucault Writes in L'Ordre du discours: "The new is not found in what is said, but in the event of its return" (p. 28); see also below, "Theatrum Philosophicum," pp. 186-196. [136] of the history,
but not the science, of mechanics; whereas, a re-examination of the
books of Freud or Marx can transform our understanding of psychoanalysis
or Marxism. A last feature
of these returns is that they tend to reinforce the enigmatic link between
an author and his works. A text has an inaugurative value precisely
because it is the work of a particular author, and our returns are conditioned
by this knwledge. The rediscovery of an unknown text by Newton or Cantor
will not modify classical cosmology or group theory; at most, it will
change our appreciation of their historical genesis. Bringing to light,
however, An Outline of psychoanalysis, to the extent that we recognize
it as a book by Freud, can transform not only our historical knowledge,
but the field of psychoanalytic theory--if only through a shift of accent
or of the center of gravity. These returns, an important component of
discursive practices, form a relationship between "fundamental"
and mediate authors, which is not identical to that which links an ordinary
text to its immediate author. These remarks concerning
the initiation of discursive practices have been extremely schematic,
especially with regard to the opposition I have tried to trace between
this initiation and the
[137] Developing a similar
analysis could provide the basis for a typology of discourse. A typology
of this sort cannot be adequately understood in relation to the grammatical
features, formal structures, and objects of discourse, because there
undoubtedly exist specific discursive properties or relationships that
are irreducible to the rules of grammar and logic and to the laws that
govern objects. These properties require investigation if we hope to
distinguish the larger categories of discourse. The different forms
of relationships (or nonrelationships) that an author can assume are
evidently one of these discursive properties. This form of investigation
might also permit the introduction of an historical analysis of discourse.
Perhaps the time has come to study not only the expressive value and
fonnal transfonnations of discourse, but its mode of existence: the
modifications and variations, within any culture, of modes of circulation,
valorization, attribution, and appropriation. Partially at the expense
of themes and concepts that an author places in his work, the "author-function"
could also reveal the manner in which discourse is articulated on the
basis of social relationships. Is it not possible
to reexamine, as a legitimate extension of this kind of analysis, the
privileges of the subject? Clearly, in undertaking an internal and architectonic
analysis of a work |
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